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Texian's Travels (Read 110826 times)
texian.traveler
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Texian's Travels
Jun 22nd, 2007 at 12:38am
 
Well, I thought I was done traveling, but maybe not.  You know, guys, I never thought I would start a journal here.  I have about three other blogs.  One was for my overseas teaching experiences.  Since I am no longer teaching overseas, that one is defunct.  And I can't post this stuff anyway because my family reads that one, and I don't want my family to read this.  One is for the teachers at my former school.  That one isn't active because I haven't told them about it yet.  I am waiting to see what happens with the lawsuits.  And the other is my very private thoughts that I don't tell anyone.  I may turn them into a book one day.  A nice, anonymous book. 

Anyway, I am just so stressed that I have to tell someone.  I called one of my very best friends, and she commiserated with me, but she is traveling to her son's graduation from the Navy, so I can't bother her right now.  And she is dealing with her boyfriend's cancer anyway.  I can't talk to my husband because he is in this...stuff...with me.

But I am not sure how much more I can take.  No, on second thought, that is a stupid comment.  The truth is that unless I decide to kill myself I can take a lot more and will.  But I can sure tell you that the summer of 2007 is not one of my banner years. 

Oh, yeah, these are supposed to be hair journals.  Well, my hair isn't doing so good now, either.  It seems very dry and there is a lot of breakage.  I have been conditioning every day but...I also put a pair of scissors in the car and I do s&d on long trips and when I am waiting for my deliveries at Sonic.  (For those of you not located in the southern US, Sonic is a drive-in burger joint where the waitresses still wear roller skates.  They have the BEST crushed ice, and a coke just tastes better when it's in a Sonic cup!)

Anyway, I just feel like I have to tell someone, some nice anonymous someones, just what hell my life has been.  I mentioned on another post that I had to leave Egypt.  I did not finish the school year, but left six weeks before.  I left because of my husband.  It is such a long story, and I'm not sure how to put it.

The people at the school are very unethical.  When we first came, they bought our children's plane tickets so we could be sure of all traveling together.  We were to pay them back when our house sold, which it didn't do until March.  They were supposed to deduct the cost of their health insurance, but instead they lumped it in with the tickets.  We owed them $5,400.00.  In October, a teacher quit, and my husband offered to do his job for two weeks while they looked for a replacement.  The school assigned him the duties permanently in an attempt to save the salary.  My husband informed them that if they wanted him to do two jobs they would pay HIM the other salary.  He taught those classes for three months, but never got any extra income.  If he had, it would have been about $5,400.00. 

There were lots of politics and power plays and garbage like that going on at the school.  He got caught in some of them, and when we returned from spring break in April he had a letter on his desk reassigning most of his duties to his assistant, who until he was hired was in charge of the computers at the school.  That letter was followed by another reducing the length of his contract and his salary, and that was followed by more sabotage of the computer system he was left in charge of.  So we left.

Now I had been trying for five years beforehand to be an administrator.  But my problem was I had no TAKS experience.  (TAKS is the standardized state test here in Texas.)  It was one of the reasons we started teaching overseas.  I had signed a contract to be the elementary principal next year, but I kept hearing rumors that they were looking for a principal.  That was one of the ways I knew that if we didn't leave my husband would be fired.

When we returned, my stepfather did not treat us like we were people who had been through a horrible experience and left all their dreams in the desert.  He treated us like we were a bunch of spongers who were only too glad of an excuse to start sucking them dry once again.  The first day we were here, he told my husband that being here was a problem and our job was to get out as fast as possible.

For background, our first overseas jobs were in Saudi Arabia.  We had a lot of visa trouble and ending up not leaving until mid-October, eight weeks into the 2004 - 2005 school year.  We stayed with my mother and her husband during that time because we had gotten rid of all our furniture and were trying to rent our house.  It was supposed to be two weeks.  It ended up being two months.  We sold one car before we left, but the other didn't sell for months.  My mother had to take care of the sale for us.

We left those jobs and took ones in Egypt.  The pay was much less and we couldn't afford to keep our house.  My mother had to handle that sale too.  Apparently my stepfather really resented that.

Anyway, the school threatened us with felony theft, since we left without paying the money we owed them.  We replied they owed us an equal amount.  Actually, more, since they withheld his last paycheck.  They said if we didn't pay them we would be hit with punitive damages. interest, lawyer's fees, and whatnot in addition to the criminal charges.  We asked if they wanted their website back. 

See, the school made my husband put the charges for hosting the school website on his personal credit card.
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #1 - Jun 22nd, 2007 at 1:11am
 
So he did.  The school never reimbursed him, because he wouldn't request reimbursement until they made arrangements to move the charges off his card and onto their own.  This turned out to be sensible.  So when they threatened all this stuff we just reminded them that as far as the hosting company was concerned we owned their webcode.  We suggested discussing the issue and any others that might exist.  No reply. 

Instead the school contacted the hosting company and claimed ownership.  The hosting company contacted us, and said the school had given them documentation that they reimbursed us for the charges.  They also told the school that as far as they were concerned we owned the code and if they wanted it they should talk with us.  We asked to see the documentation for reimbursement.  They are clear forgeries.  The school still has not contacted us.

So here I am, homeless and jobless with a completely unethical former employer threatening me with legal action and showing he will stop at nothing to get what he wants.  I knew that my stepfather didn't like us living with him, so as soon as school was out we moved to Dallas with my mother-in-law.  But my mother really wanted her grandchildren, so after about two-and-a-half weeks they came for a visit.  Five days after they arrived my mother had a heart attack, and had to have a quadruple bypass.

Oh, I forgot the part about my dad.  I had to delay my trip to Egypt in the fall because my father was hospitalized and the doctor would only release him to a facility.  So I had to find one.  I won't go into that, but when I returned I found that my brother hadn't visited him the entire time I was gone and the facility was considering him abandoned.  They were ready to declare him a ward of the state.  In addition, his former neighbor was attempting to get power-of-attorney and buy his house at one third of its value.  But back to my mother.

So I come down to Bryan to be with my mom, but I go back to Dallas so I can be there with my dad on Father's Day.  (Normally, I would go back and fix all the verb tense discrepancies, but you know, I'm just not this time).  I told my mom that I would come down and take care of her when she got out of the hospital.  She got out on Monday, and I came down Tuesday. 

My husband and I have only one car, and even though my mother-in-law is retired, she takes care of my brother-in-law, who is a stroke victim, during the day.  So my children came with me.  I thought it would be nice if my mom could visit with them for an hour or so and then they would go back with my husband.

When my stepfather saw my children walk through the door, he hit the roof.  I went to the bathroom, and when I came out he and my husband are screaming at one another.  He had accused my husband of causing her heart attack by constantly dumping our children on her and being such dreadful sponging people.  Actually I don't know exactly what he said.  My husband just turned to me with fire in his eyes and said, "He's accusing us of killing her."  My stepfather told him to get out of his house and called him all sorts of names. 

I know my mother is very upset by all of this so I go back to her room.  She is crying and saying she doesn't understand.  She keeps saying she wants my daughter and my son.  They of course are totally confused, and have gone outside with my husband.  Her husband goes back to her, and I can hear her begging him to let her see her grandchildren.  So I go talk to my husband, and he says that if anything like that will ever be said again, they aren't going.

So I tell my stepfather this, in front of my mother.  I offered to do it privately, but he said he didn't have any secrets from her.  He said it wouldn't be said again.  So my children spent some time with her, and he apologized to them but said he didn't like their father and their father didn't like him.  My husband left, and I told him I would call him when the kids were ready.

Now as if all this wasn't bad enough, when my husband's father died about four years ago, he accused my husband of causing his death.  He had terminal colon cancer, but no one in his family would admit it.  So the hospital had agreed to send him home with a feeding tube and whatnot, even though they didn't want to.  My father-in-law asked my husband to help him go to the bathroom.  Not being a trained nurse, he didn't understand exactly where he needed to be and his dad fell.  After the fall there was no more talk of feeding tubes.  They sent him home to die.  My father-in-law looked at his son after hearing this and said, "Why did you let me fall?" 

It ripped him apart, even though they weren't close.  So to be accused a second time...I don't think my father-in-law understands that their relationship is over.  My husband will never enter his house again or be in the same room with him ever again.  I can't ask him to.  I can't ask him to be with the man who called him a dumb *^)$ and accused him of killing his wife.  Christmas is going to be interesting to say the least.

So when I think the kids are ready I call my husband, but the kids decide they are hungry and want something to eat.  So my stepfather is feeding them when my husband arrives.  I go out to talk to him and he says he can't do this anymore; he's done.  I don't understand.  He keeps telling me I need to call Penny.  I still don't get it until he says, "I can't compete with your family anymore."
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #2 - Jun 22nd, 2007 at 1:16am
 
I realize he is saying that he wants a divorce.  I tell him that I think this is not something we should be discussing right now.  But I have realized something.

For over twenty years I have been trying to keep peace between my stepfather and my husband.  I have told my husband more than once that I didn't want my mother to have to chose between her husband and her daughter.  But I know now that the person who didn't want to have to choose is me.  But that option of "non-choice" has been taken away.  I have to choose now.  And there really is no choice.  I made a vow before God nineteen years ago that I would leave my mother and father and cleave unto him, and that is what I have to do. 

But I don't have to be happy about it.

Thanks for listening.
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #3 - Jun 22nd, 2007 at 8:32am
 
Oh dear.  What a sad, sad story.

As a guy this would drive me absolutely crazy also it instantly reminded me of the saying: "Urgent situations demand urgent resolutions" So please TT I really hope you don't mind this ????  Undecided  Undecided

Believe me I most definitely do understand your marriage vows fully (!) therefore in your shoes....

....I'd sit down quietly somewhere and carefully think through what it has and still is doing to me and my nerves. My wonderful husband and his nerves. And most of all my beautiful children and their nerves going non-stop from one crisis to the next. But no-one else's nerves mind you !

Having fully grasped this vital fact, I'd then beg, borrow or sell whatever of value and get together as much cash as quickly as possible. Meantime I'd have rung my 4 (minimum) bestest and most trusted friends somewhere, anywhere but as far away as possible. Then I'd leave a quick note for hubby that I'd ring as soon as possible and as often as possible. Then I'd grab the kids aiming to stay with each friend for as long as possible. Then I'd ring once settled and beg hubby to get over as soon as possible because I missed him badly. (Guys like that wanted and needed feeling from their love, brings a nice warm glow !  Wink )
 
I'd then build MY own life, try and sort out a job afresh together with hubby where I and he only make the decisions and give MYSELF and my family's nerves a break at last. Because I'm trapped and slowly drowning in everyone's else's daily trivia, lives, nerves, problems and their decision making and so is my family. And because it's just as much my responsibility that's not fair on us and will not be until the cycle's broken for ever.

I know the grass won't be any greener but I will know that my own and my family's nerves will benefit enormously and that's what counts. The daily existence....

In one sentence - think of yourself first and the rest will follow rather than constantly the other way round. Grabbing a firm hold on your own life after so long is not being selfish it's being practical and taking care of no 1, 2 and the kids. And above all your nerves !!

Sorry to say it like this but that's how it all seems from this onlooker's perspective. Really hope I haven't offended you talking like this TT but I'm sure you realise it's not personal.

God go with you and your own family whatever Smiley


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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #4 - Jun 22nd, 2007 at 9:13am
 
Oh my.  Huh  You have had some major challenges thrown in front of you.  I hope that just putting it all down in writing has helped you see your situation more clearly and can help you develop a plan that will give you, your kids and your husband some peace. 



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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #5 - Jun 22nd, 2007 at 12:40pm
 
I Don't know what to tell you about all this, Texian, but... I pray it all works out for you. *hug*
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #6 - Jun 22nd, 2007 at 7:01pm
 
TT, first off, BIG HUGS and blessings to you for finding yourself in such an unfortunate position.

More unfortunate still is that there isn't an easy way out of it. Your first consideration has to be your children. And exposing them to the constant drama between your husband and your stepfather is not ok. I know that you and your children want to see your mother and that she wants to see all of you. However, she has chosen to marry someone who makes that impossible. Your mother needs to understand that you can't allow your children to visit her while your stepdad is around. Period. If she can break away by herself to see all of you for awhile, that would be fine. But keep your family away from your stepfather. If he is this disrespectful to the family that he married into, then he's not acting like part of the family, is he? He's coming between a family that was already established before he came into the picture.
    If your mother cannot do anything without her husband by her side, then I'm sorry, but you'll have to cut her out of the picture as well. She has her choices to make, and you have yours. But your first priority should be protecting your children from abusive behaviours that they don't need to witness.

Your husband is your partner, period. And by trying to maintain a relationship with everybody, you've put unnecessary strain on your marriage. Don't force him to compete with your family when you've already chosen to commit yourself to him. What you need to do is draw tight to your own immediate family (your husband and your children) and ignore everything else. Don't associate yourself with people whom you know will cause drama.

As for your financial situation, you have 2 choices: You can discuss your rights with an attorney or you can give in and pay back whatever the schools overseas are demanding. Either option will require some very serious budgeting on your behalf.

In any case, I really hope that things straighten out for you soon. You've certainly had a rough go over the years and it would be relieving to see something work in your favour. However, you really have to examine what part you may have played in getting yourself into these situations in the first place. That way, you can gain hindsight and learn how to avoid them next time.
    Don't worry about being diplomatic and pleasing everyone. Not everyone deserves it. Worry about your children and your husband and your money right now. And the heck with everything/everyone else.

All the best, hon. You'll be in my prayers. *hugs*
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #7 - Aug 6th, 2007 at 8:02pm
 
You guys are going to think it just doesn't stop with me.  I know other people have just as much trauma and drama in their lives; I just tend to be a little more...open...about mine.  

Oh, since this is a hair journal, my hair is frustrating me NO END!  It is breaking like nobody's business.  It snarls at the least excuse, and when I untangle the hairs they are bent at various angles.  I can't even s&d the split ends; there are too many.  I know I need to start oiling, but the family finances are super stretched at the moment.  I figure I need to bite the bullet and cut about 2 inches at least, but I don't want to do that until I can afford the oil.  

Anyway, the reason for my writing today is my father.  I mentioned in one of the last posts that he is in a facility.  I can't describe what the man is like.  He looks reasonable.  He sounds reasonable.  Yet he is the most exhausting, exasperating...it's indescribable.  He is not rational, and he hasn't been for a very long time.  I'm not sure he's ever been rational.

My mother divorced him to preserve her own sanity, my brother can't deal with him, and I am seriously thinking of walking out of his life and having him declared a ward of the state.  

He just...drifts along, like he has no control over anything that happens to him.  He is like the ultimate passive aggressive.  He's...d*^n, I'm getting all tangled up.  Maybe I should just try and say what happened.  

When they were married, he made my mother the center of his existence.  She couldn't take the pressure, or his...irrationality.  As I described what I went through today, she said that she went through very similar experiences and thought processes in her decision to divorce him.  She felt, and still feels over 25 years later, that she would have died had she stayed with him.  

He found religion about three months before she left, and his entire personality changed.  But it was too little, too late, and she left anyway.  The divorce process, which should have taken about three months, took two years.  Not through his contesting who got what; that wasn't it.  But he would continually miss deadlines, hoping that if he did nothing it would just all...go away.  She had been remarried for over 20 years when he said to me, "Well, I think your mother's not coming back."  That was when he gave me the diamond earrings he bought her the first Christmas after she left.    

More after "Singing Bee".
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #8 - Aug 6th, 2007 at 11:37pm
 
So where was I?  Oh yeah, denying reality.  So after she left he stayed in the house, even though he really couldn't afford the payments alone.  It was very important to him that EVERYTHING be as it was, so she could come back to exactly the same life she left.  Which idea gets crazier the more I think about it.  

He quit his job, withdrew his retirement, and spent it on get-rich-quick schemes.  When those didn't pan out, he REALLY couldn't afford the house, so he got behind on the payments and got an eviction notice.  He went through all sorts of machinations, including bankruptcy, to keep the house.  But without income, he just lost it again.  The sheriff was coming to evict him on a Tuesday.  My brother showed up with some friends to move him out to his mother's house, which he inherited free and clear, on a Saturday.  My dad refused to go.  He believed God would miraculously bring my mother back, and that God would supernaturally prevent him from losing the house.

He has been living in my grandmother's house for the last 20 years.

The times he has told me he was supernaturally prevented from succeeding, supernaturally prevented from looking for a job, the times he has told me that God was going to miraculously restore everything...well, let's say if I had a dime for each one I would not be going on public assistance now.

People who successfully ignore reality for over 25 years get REALLY good at it.  

During those 25 years he neglected his health, including the diabetes he refused to treat.  As a result, our interaction today was taking him to the retinal specialist, who injected his eye with medicine to stop the bleeding.  But whenever I asked him to go to the eye doctor, offered to drive him, offered to pay for it, he said no.  God was going to restore his sight.

When we were there, he couldn't read the E.  The big one.  At the top of the chart.  Yet he sat there in that examining room and told me that he was going to go back and live in his house.  Ah, the house.  I will get to the house.

He didn't brush his teeth during those 25 years, with the result they are rotting brown stumps in his mouth.  It is even difficult to be in a car with him, as the stench of the rot kind of wafts into the front seat from the back.  We haven't dealt with those yet, although I did get a statement of care from the dentist.  $8,700.00.  But God was going to restore those too.

When he was going through really lean periods, I sent him groceries, since I lived over 300 miles away at the time.  The next time I visited, I got them back.

Now, the house.  There was an article in Reader's Digest this past year about collectors.  How they fill their houses with stuff.  To the point they have to sleep in their yards.  Well, he wasn't THAT bad.  His bed was clear.  But imagine a 2100 sqf house filled with garbage.  Not rotting banana peels, but broken chairs.  Crutches.  Lawn mowers.  Vacuum cleaners.  Books.  Clothes.  Coffee cups.  Magazines.  Imagine stacks of this stuff six feet high, with little paths running in between.  It took two hours yesterday to clear the entry way so we could fully open the door.    

I spent years worrying, if I couldn't get him on the phone, that he was dead in that house and no one knew.  I agonized over him driving his motorcycle, asking myself how I would feel if he killed someone, or worse, caused someone to kill him, leaving them with the guilt and possible criminal charges?  

Finally, last year, I got a reprieve.  He stopped at a convenience store because he didn't feel well, and the clerk called EMS.  The hospital said he had the beginnings of dementia and refused to release him to anything but a facility.  They also took away his license.

I found a facility near where my brother works.  He improved SO MUCH, that we decided to try him at home with a home health nurse.  Stupid, with the house the way it was, but he really was a LOT better.  But the nurse said he couldn't stay, and when I walked into the kitchen and found a burner on full blast and nothing on it, I agreed.  I found one by his house, hoping to move him into assisted living at a later date.  He is on Medicaid, so things are complicated by the utter lack of finances on both our parts.  (Part of my teaching in the Middle East was to try and get some money to take care of him.  Boy, did that one backfire big time!)  He kept trying to walk home.   So while I was in Egypt my brother moved him to a facility much farther away.  His friends can't visit easily, but the prospect of walking home is daunting, even to him!  Plus, he is in the locked ward.

He doesn't want to be there.  I don't want him there.  But he still has this idea that he is going home.  He told me this today.  I have asked him to give me power-of-attorney to sell the house.  If he would, I would work to get him someplace less restrictive, because that would tell me he has accepted his reality and is willing to deal with it.  No dice.

When he entered the facility, Medicaid placed a lien upon his house.  They get to recover their costs before he can make a profit on its sale or I can inherit.  Well, the house isn't worth that much.  The year he has spent in the facility so far has pretty much eaten any profit on the house.  But in the meantime, it is sitting empty, a liability to all in the neighborhood.  

Okay, there is still more, but I promised my son I would stop at 10:30 and watch a movie.  To be continued. 
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #9 - Aug 7th, 2007 at 2:12am
 
So even though the house is paid for it still gets taxed.  When Dad told me he wouldn't give me POA, I told him I wasn't going to pay the taxes on the house anymore.  That would be stupid, since I would only be paying them for Medicaid.  If he would let me sell, there is a way to shelter some of the money, but he won't sell and he won't let me.  So as far as I am concerned the county and Medicaid can fight over it.  

All I want is some family heirlooms, which is why I was in it trying to get the door clear so I can get them out.  One of his neighbors called him and said I was in cleaning the house out.

I told Dad flat out today when he mentioned it that I was getting what I could out of the house before the county took it.  He informed me, a trifle smugly, that the taxes were taken care of.  I asked how, and he said a friend had set up an automatic draft.  

Now I know that is impossible.  You have to sign something with the county or the bank and sometimes both.  In addition, he has the same amount in his checking account now that he did a year ago.  No money has been going into that account I know, so no money could have been coming out.  Plus, one of the times that he says his friend who was supposed to be handling this for him on the outside paid them, I paid them.  

He told me in early July he needed to go to his bank so he could pay his taxes.  I told him then what I was going to do since he wouldn't give me POA.  So now he's come up with this story.

But apparently as we sit in the doctor's office for those FOUR HOURS it bothers him.  And he says that he'll have to get out and investigate.  Now I have no sort of legal restrictions on him.  Not medical power of attorney, personal power of attorney, declaration that he is incompetent, nothing.  So maybe I am not as liable as I think.  But legally, at the moment, he can check himself out of this facility and there is nothing I can do about it.  

So I asked him where he was going to go.  He said home.  So I leaned forward and said, "Only if I live in another country."  Then I pointed out that BEFORE he lived in a facility I was not legally responsible for him.  But the facility certainly seems to think that I am the legally responsible party, and if I let him go home, I can be prosecuted for elder abuse.  And I said, "Dad, I love you a lot, but I am not going to jail for you."  And right then the doctor walked in.  Wonder what he thought?

I have told my friends that I keep him locked up for the protection of others.  He doesn't give a d*&n whether he lives or dies so I can't protect him from himself.  But I can protect the child he doesn't hit on his motorcycle.  I can protect the neighbor whose house doesn't burn because he left his burner on.  

What I did not realize, until today, was that I may have to protect ME.  I cannnot describe to you what it is like to try and care for someone, to preserve their life, when they care nothing about it themselves.  It is exhausting.  And it uses you up.  It used up my mother; it used up my brother; it used up his aunt and every friend who's ever cared about him.  20 years seems to be about the span.  I think I've lasted more than most because I actually have dealt with him the least.  But I cannot, I will not, sacrifice my family or any part of myself to him.

He did not go to the doctor today so he could regain some sight.  It wasn't about getting better or reclaiming any part of his life.  He was humoring me, and those silly people at the nursing home who thought he should go.  He just sort of drifted along the whole time, vaguely under protest.

Now I admit that a doctor's office isn't a great place to be, but if my alternative was the lock-down ward in a nursing home...?

Anyway, I am going to talk to the social worker at the facility tomorrow and let her know that if he thinks the threat of losing his house is real, he will make some serious efforts to get out, by legal means or otherwise.  And I will ask her what my legal liabilities are.

What my dad doesn't know is that I am also working on having his house condemned.  I have to get the heirlooms out first; they are some furniture my great-grandfather made.  But once I have them, I am turning the paperwork into the city.  

I know I must sound like the meanest, most grasping, self-centered...witch...ever.  I'm not.  Really.  I do understand that admitting he's getting old, that he can't care for himself, is a tough thing.  Lots of people have trouble with it.  I probably will myself.  Couple that with the fact that admitting this would also mean those 25 years he spent waiting for God to wave His magic wand were wasted and...I do understand that he just can't.  He's got 25 years invested in this lie; he can't give it up now.  

But I have to make sure that living that lie destroys only him.  Not me.  Not my family.  Not anyone else.  Just him.  
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #10 - Aug 7th, 2007 at 2:19am
 
As I sit here,all I can think and say is OMG!  I feel as if,maybe it is the way you write,that I am right there seeing all of this!  I totally feel for ya!  Trying to deal with Medicaid or Medicare can only be short of screaming at the top of your lungs in sheer fustration!  They're there though with their "hands" out to either be paid or expect to be payed(?) for whatever they think they should be payed for. Also with your father's "unique" thought of God will provide or take care of this mess,is so much like the thought that I have of my father,he'd throw his kids or anyone for that matter a weighted life preserver if you were drowning!  I wish you all the best with dealing with all the garbage nonsense that alot of these burocratic agencies throw at you.  Also your father.  He sounds like a very talented man that has a gift for dealing with reality.  I don't mean that in any way sarcastic or malitious(spelling?)
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #11 - Aug 7th, 2007 at 2:28am
 
Malicious.   Smiley 

Thank you.  I just had to pour out some more frustration or I was going to explode.  It does help to know that people care.      

I am starting to think seriously about that book.

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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #12 - Aug 7th, 2007 at 6:10am
 
You are welcome. Thank you on the correction.  It's alittle tough to think that early in the morning and spell words not often used!!
Please think on that book.  I truly believe it not only would be good "therapy",but you write with such openess,it is refreshing!  I did alot of creative writing in highschool and further on in my adult life.  It truly is a privledge to expand on the ability to read,write and share with others.  Just my opinion Smiley.
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #13 - Aug 7th, 2007 at 8:13am
 
Hugs for you.  It is always difficult to deal with parents that are no longer able to care for themselves - especially when they don't realize they need help.  A couple of comments that might ease your mind a bit....

1.  Unless you have been assigned as your father's guardian, you are not responsible for him.  If he is a voluntary patient where he is now and he walks out - YOU are not responsible.

2.  If you can get 2 doctors to state your father is incompetent, you could get the courts to either assign you durable power of attorney to deal with his medical, financial and personal decisions or specific power of attorney to help with decision making..  The facility where he is now should be able to help you with this.  Be sure to talk with the social worker there about this.

3.  You can find out the tax status on your father's house.  This is public information.  Some counties have web pages where you can look up this information.  Otherwise a simple phone call can give you what the current and back taxes are on his home.

4.  If the house is not "safe" due to the collection of stuff, you could get the county to declare it uninhabitable until it is cleaned out.  Assuming your father is a senior citizen and "disabled", there are usually agencies that can help you out with cleaning the house to make it habitable again.  Checking with the local United Way or the county social services department can help you find help.

5.  Don't feel responsible for your father.  He is mentally ill.  You have done what you can to help him and until you have official responsibility for him, you are fighting an uphill battle.  Try to spend your energies on getting him properly diagnosed and declared incompetent so that he can get the help he needs so that he does not hurt himself or others.

Good luck to you.
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #14 - Aug 7th, 2007 at 9:39am
 
Thanks, BB.  You have no idea what seeing the words, "He is mentally ill", just matter-of-factly down there in black and white (or was it black and purple?) did for me.  You are right.  I cannot argue or fight with him.  He isn't capable of rational actions, and the fact that he looks and sounds reasonable so much of the time doesn't mean he is.
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